Can I use Tortoise SVN to have better version control for source code on my personal computer?
I do not have to share the source code with someone, its just that I am tired of creating a new copy of the file every time I have to make some changes to it and keeping track of all these files.
Is there some link that explains the same that you can direct me to? or just tell me what I should be doing...
You can just create a "repo" on your filesystem without running a server. This article give detailed instructions. Basically you create a repo folder, use TortiseSVN to create a repository in that folder, and then check out your repo, using the file protocol (file:///path/to/repo), into your development workspace..
You can do, and I'd recommend you to do so. I was in your state, about a year ago, modify a little piece of code here and there, and couple weeks later found it to be a total mess with no way of knowing what I did when, for what reason.
Install SVN , install the Tortise SVN shell extension, create a local repo and then start committing as and when you require. Have a look for a tutorial by Jeff Atwood - SVN in Windows
( Assuming Windows, you haven't mentioned your OS, Linux should come with svn installed, else just install it from your package manager).
Git or Mercurial are recent version control systems and may indeed be better suited than SVN for this. TortoiseHG is a Mercurial-compatible GUI similar to TortoiseSVN. The workflow is very similar: Add the files you want to version, Commit whenever you reach a milestone, and Update/Checkout when you want to go back to an early revision.
Mercurial is much easier than SVN to setup and use effectively once you get used to it. You do not need to initialize a separate repository, it lies in your work directory (just run the init command on your workdir).
If you need to work on separate versions of the same project, you can simply make a copy of your work directory, commit different changes in each copy, and eventually pull changes from one to the other if you want (SVN requires you to manually create branches in the central repo, and merges are harder to get right).
Mercurial repositories are also much easier to backup and restore (you can always simply copy them, but you can use push and pulls to make incremental transfers to your backup location)
Here is a good reference book about Hg; once you get the basics, GUI usage should follow naturally.
